“If I question too close, refuse me answers. But I feel a need to know. A son of the cloister?”
“No,” said Cadfael, “a son of the Crusade. His mother lived and died in Antioch. I never knew I had left her a son until I met with him here in England, and he named her, mentioned times, left me in no doubt at all. The cloister came later.”
“The Crusade!” Philip echoed. His eyes burned up into gold. He narrowed their brightness curiously upon Cadfael’s grizzled tonsure and lined and weathered face. “The Crusade that made a Christian kingdom in Jerusalem? You were there? Of all battles, surely the worthiest.”
“The easiest to justify, perhaps,” Cadfael agreed ruefully. “I would not say more than that.”
The bright, piercing gaze continued to weigh and measure and wonder, with a sudden personal passion, staring through Cadfael into far distances, beyond the fabled Midland Sea, into the legendary Frankish kingdoms of Outremer. Ever since the fall of Edessa Christendom had been uneasy in its hopes and fears for Jerusalem, and popes and abbots were stirring in their sleep to consider their beleaguered capital, and raise their voices like clarions calling to the defence of the Church. Philip was not yet so old but he could quicken to the sound of the trumpet.
“How did it come that you encountered him here, all unknown? And once only?”
“Twice, and by God’s grace there will be a third time,” said Cadfael stoutly. He told, very briefly, of the circumstances of both those meetings.
“And still he does not know you for his sire? You never told him?”
“There is no need for him to know. No shame there, but no pride, either. His course is nobly set, why cause any tremor to deflect or shake it?”
“You ask nothing, want nothing of him?” The perilous bitterness was back in Philip’s voice, husky with the pain of all he had hoped for from his own father, and failed to receive. Too fierce a love, perverted into too fierce a hate, corroded all his reflections on the anguished relationship between fathers and sons, too close and too separate, and never in balance.
“He owes me nothing,” said Cadfael. “Nothing but such friendship and liking as we have deserved of each other by free will and earned trust, not by blood.”
“And yet it is by blood,” said Philip softly, “that you conceive you owe him so much, even to a life. Brother, I think you are telling me something I have learned to know all too well, though it took me years to master it. We are born of the fathers we deserve, and they engender the sons they deserve. We are our own penance and theirs. The first murderous warfare in the world, we are told, was between two brothers, but the longest and the bitterest is between fathers and sons. Now you offer me the father for the son, and you are offering me nothing that I want or need, in a currency I cannot spend. How could I ease my anger on you? I respect you, I like you, there are even things you might ask of me that I would give you with goodwill. But I will not give you Olivier.”
It was a dismissal. There was no more speech between them that night. From the chapel, hollowly echoing along the corridors of stone, the bell chimed for Compline.
Chapter Nine.
CADFAEL ROSE at midnight, waking by long habit even without the matins bell, and being awake, recalled that he was lodged in a tiny cell close to the chapel. That gave him further matter for thought, though he had not considered earlier that it might have profound implications. He had declared himself honestly enough in his apostasy to Philip, and Philip, none the less, had lodged him here, where a visiting cleric might have expected such a courtesy. And being so close, and having been so considerately housed there, why should he not at least say Matins and Lauds before the altar? He had not surrendered or compromised his faith, however he had forfeited his rights and privileges.
The very act of kneeling in solitude, in the chill and austerity of stone, and saying the familiar words almost silently, brought him more of comfort and reassurance than he had dared to expect. If grace was not close to him, why should he rise from his knees so cleansed of the doubts and anxieties of the day, and clouded by no least shadow of the morrow’s uncertainties?
He was in the act of withdrawing, and a pace or two from the open door, which he had refrained from closing in case it should creak loudly enough to wake others, when one who was awake, and as silent as he, looked in upon him. The faint light showed them to each other clearly enough.
“For an apostate,” said Philip softly, “you keep the hours very strictly, brother.” He wore a heavy furred gown over his nakedness, and walked barefooted on the stone. “Oh, no, you did not disturb me. I sat late tonight. For that you may take the blame if you wish.”
“Even a recusant,” said Cadfael, “may cling by the hems of grace. But I am sorry if I have kept you from sleep.”
“There may be better than sorrow in it for you,” said Philip. “We will speak again tomorrow. I trust you have all you need here, and lie at least as softly as in the dortoir at home? There is no great difference between the soldier’s bed and the monk’s, or so they tell me. I have tried only the one, since I came to manhood.”
Truth, indeed, since he had taken up arms in this endless contention in support of his father before he reached twenty.
“I have known both,” said Cadfael, “and complain of neither.”
“So they told me, I recall, at Coventry. Some who knew of you. As I did not, not then,” said Philip, and drew his gown closer about him. “I, too, had a word to say to God,” he said, and passed Cadfael and entered his chapel. “Come to me after Mass.”
“Not behind a closed door this time,” said Philip, taking Cadfael by the arm as they came out from Mass, “but publicly in hall. No, you need not speak at all, your part is done. I have considered all that has emerged concerning Brien de Soulis and Yves Hugonin, and if the one matter is still unproven, guilty or no, the other cries out too loud to be passed over. Let Brien de Soulis rest as well as he may, it is too late to accuse him, at least here. But Hugonin, no, there is too great a doubt. I no longer accuse him, I dare not. Come, see him released to ride and rejoin his own faction, wherever he pleases.”
In the hall of La Musarderie trestle tables and benches were all cleared away, leaving the great space stark and bare, the central fire roused and well tended, for winter was beginning to bite with night frosts, and for all the shelter of the deep river valley the winds found their bitter way in by every shutter and every arrow-slit. Philip’s officers gathered there turned impartial faces as he entered, and a cluster of men-at-arms held off and watched, awaiting his will.
“Master of arms,” said Philip, “go and bring up Yves Hugonin from his cell. Take the smith with you, and strike off his chains. It has been shown me that in all probability I have done him wrong in thinking him guilty of de Soulis’s death. At least I have doubt enough in me to turn him loose and clear him of all offence against me. Go and fetch him here.”
They went without hesitation, with a kind of indifferent briskness that came naturally to these men who served him. Fear had no part in their unquestioning promptness. Any who feared him would have fallen off from him and taken themselves elsewhere.
“You have given me no chance to be grateful,” said Cadfael in Philip’s ear.
“There is no occasion for gratitude here. If you have told me truth, this is due. I make too much haste, sometimes, but I do not of intent spit in the face of truth.” And to some of the men who hovered in the doorway: “See his horse saddled, and his saddle-roll well provided. No, wait a while for that. His own grooming may take a while, and we must send our guests forth fed and presentable.”
They went to do his bidding, to heat water and carry it to an empty apartment, and install there the saddle-roll that had been hoisted from the horse when Yves had been brought in prisoner. So it was more than half an hour later when the boy was brought into the hall before his captor, and baulked and stared at the sight of Brother Cadfael standing at Philip’s side.